An integrated technical-economic model for evaluating CO2 enhanced oil recovery development

Carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been proved to effectively reduce CO2 emissions by storing industrial CO2 underground while increasing oil production. An integrated assessment model was developed to evaluate the technical and economic performance of CO2-EOR based on data from more than 40 historical field projects. Unlike previous models, the model comprehensively assesses economic potential and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission of CO2-EOR together and is based on a large amount of field data. The technical model estimates incremental oil production based on CO2 injection. The model also estimates the net CO2 emissions by considering the emissions from oil production and CO2 utilization. The economic model simulated the net present value (NPV) of six scenarios under different design requirements. The breakeven oil price for small scale CO2 pipeline project was $46.4/barrel. The porosity, net pay, CO2 injection, depth, oil formation factor, and oil saturation are the critical parameters affecting the economic performance based on the sensitivity analysis. The breakeven price of carbon tax scenario was $64.10/barrel, of which CO2 injection and carbon tax contributed 52% of the NPV variations. The study provides operators, investors, and even policymakers the sufficient and important information to fully understand CO2-EOR developments with various external and internal parameters before making the right decisions.